Fools & hope still rule: U.S. may sink under weight of corruption, but the vitality of life remains

President Obama might be an easygoing man, but his temperament may be his problem. (Sabo/News)

I am quite disappointed with what President Obama and the Democrats have allowed the health care opposition to get away with. That is, one of the biggest lies in the history of political lying.

The President might be an easygoing man, but his temperament may be his problem. As one black politician said to me, "Those white advisers have convinced Obama that he will get an allergic reaction to a powerful black man from the white people if he starts playing the game like Lyndon Johnson and puts his foot in every crack he finds necessary.

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"In politics, if you don't use it, you lose power. You got to make your opponents fear you, especially when they have sold the country out and it's right there in black and white.

"You got to raise your voice and prove your opposition is lying. Yes, people, the guys and dolls who claim to be so concerned with saving your money tied up Medicare and Medicaid and whatever else so that they could not barter down the price of prescriptions. That's why the price of drugs is so high in this ... country. The Republicans put it into law! The pharmaceutical industry made out like fat rats because the Republicans passed a bill that gave them $500 billion!

"Now Obama and the Democrats, just after that happened in the last couple of Bush years, keep quiet when you should hear them all over Washington and as far north as Maine shouting it out. If the public can't get the truth from the Democrats about something as serious as this, with billions of dollars at stake, what do they need them for?"

I was haunted by that as I went around my neighborhood and talked with the kid at the copy center and then went to a local restaurant called Francesco's. After a warm exchange with two mountainous cops who recognized me from my picture in the paper, I then ran into the white-haired and feisty woman from up the block.

I then went to BookCourt, my favorite local bookstore. As usual, the clientele looked as varied as the United Nations and was joined together by the love of reading, which always clarifies the atmosphere.

I called a car service and got a car driven by a bearded man who was playing the music of the great Egyptian singer Om Kalsoum, who died the year that I moved to New York, 1975.

He was surprised that I knew the sound of her voice, but I was not surprised that he was here in the sort of winter they largely do not know in the Middle East. He seemed a good man and was clearly ready for the chance to act on one's dreams that the United States still offers to more people than anywhere else in the world.

We may sink under the weight of corruption and incompetence from our leaders at the top, but the invincible vitality of life below the board meetings and the congressional sellouts remains in place. Our humanity is up to any challenge.

After we go down much further, we will rise again because quality will prove to be more important to business success than profit alone. As our banking system and our corporations have made clear, we are now sinking under the belief that incompetence is acceptable as long as it pulls along an enormous wagon of rolling profit. Happy Holidays.